Development of dried thermophilic mixed culture by convective air drying for palm oil mill effluent (POME) treatment

Huge generation of liquid waste is a huge concern in palm oil industry. Biological treatment of this waste at high temperature gives better efficiency and methane yield but is challenging due to difficulty in cultivation, storage, and transportation of the suitable microbiological culture. As such, preservation by convective air drying is proposed as solution. This study set out to investigate heat pump and oven drying as viable drying alternatives at different conditions. The study found that the highest product quality was achieved when the microbiological mixed culture was dried under heat pump dryer at mild temperature with sucrose as additive.